ay so. Can't be worse, really, but 'puttying up'
is down by the heels, and there hasn't been an old master from Flushing,
Long Island, or Weehawken, New Jersey, lugged up our stairs for a
month;--two months, really. We had one last week from a dealer down-town
which turned out to be genuine after Sam had looked it over. And, of
course, Sam wouldn't touch it and sent for the auctioneer and told him
so. And the beggar made Sam hunt for the signature and Sam found it
at the top of the canvas instead of at the bottom. One of the early
Dutchmen Sam said it was. Some kind of a Beck or a Koven. And would you
believe it, the very next day the fellow got a whacking price for it
from a collector up in one of the side streets near the Park. So Sam
has gone back to the early American school. This means that he's getting
down to his last five-dollar bill, and I want to tell you that I'm
not far from it myself. I'd have been dead broke if I hadn't sold
two Fatimas. One in pink pants and the other a flying angel in summer
clothes to fit an alcove in an up-town barroom over the cigar-stand.

"But my money isn't Sam's money," he went on without pausing, "and Sam
won't touch a penny of it. Never does unless I fool him on the sly. And
I've come up here to fool him now, and fool him bad. I want you to hold
on to this bust--wait until I get it out of my pocket." Here he pulled
out a small bronze, a head of Augustus, beautifully wrought.

"If you buy the picture, I'll throw in the ancient Roman," and he laid
it on the counter.

"And I want you to write Sam a note, asking him if he can't look around
for one of his masterpieces, something say ten by fourteen; wanted for a
customer who only buys good things. That any little landscape with water
in it will do. Remember, don't leave out the water. Then Sam will come
thumping down-stairs with the note, and I'll be awfully astonished and
we'll talk it over, and I'll pull this out from under a pile of stuff
where I'll hide it as soon as I get home. Then I'll say: 'Well, I'm
going up-town and have Mr. O'Day look at it, and maybe it will suit him,
and that if it does, I'll make him pay fifty dollars for it.' How do you
think that will work?"

Felix, who had been looking into the old fellow's eyes, reading his mind
in their depths, seeing clear down into the heart beneath, now picked up
the bronze and began passing his hand over it.

"Very lovely," he said at last, "and a marvellous paten. Where di